Coming up for air

Pardon me - it appears that I fell off the face of the Earth for a couple of weeks. I blame school. It's cutting into my blogging time, if not my knitting time! I've put a few things on hold lately, and have been focused on small stash-busting projects, including quite a bit of charity knitting (details next time).

I also got inspired by the many mitre-square blankets that I've been seeing around the blogs lately. I'm not normally one to hop on the bandwagon, especially when the bandwagon involves inordinate amounts of seaming, but something about the play of colours (especially in Cara's blanket), and the geometry of it all, the way colour value keeps your eye moving around, it intrigued me. Now I've never knit a mitre square in my life. I understod the concept, but I just didn't see the need. But seeing as I never throw anything out, I had squirreled away a Ziplock bag full of ends of sock yarn. What the heck was I ever planning to do with those? Well, here's the answer:


Here's the next square, still blocking prior to seaming:


I guess my palette of sock colours is pretty dull! I've never been one for brightly coloured socks, and obviously I quite like my blues and browns. The green in that last square? I over-dyed some leftover pale blue with Wilton cake dye (Moss Green). I needed something a little brighter.

So I think once I get up to 12 or 15, maybe 20 squares, I can sew it all together and call it a baby blanket. But the problem is that I've just about used up all of my scraps. Rather than buy more yarn (heaven knows I've got more than enough yarn piled up already!), or break open some fresh new skeins, I think I'm just going to put this away, and gradually add to it in the future. Every time I finish a pair or two of socks, I can knit another mitre with the leftovers, and the colours will evolve over time. I like the idea of dong it in small bits - I think I will look forward to each new square.

Hedgehog Knits - taking thrift to a whole new level!